El lobo, part 2: Greenfire’s Ghost

In mid-June of this year (2014), I continued on my quest to record the howls of lobos (Mexican gray wolves).  This time I headed for the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in east-central Arizona, to the wild country along the west fork of the Black River.

I met up with Jean Ossorio (who actually planned the trip) as she celebrated her 365th day of camping in lobo country.  I never would have thought to count the number of days I’d camped anywhere, but Jean, the world’s staunchest lobo advocate, has run into enough people that question the safety of camping in wolf country that she has started to keep track of these things.  A school teacher in a previous life, Jean has followed the successes and failures of the lobo reintroduction since it started.   She has attended countless public meetings, written countless letters advocating on behalf of the lobos, and kept track of the details of each lobo, each pack, and every person involved in one way or another with the project.  She is often accompanied by her husband and partner-in-crime, Peter, but if he’s busy on another project, she usually has no trouble roping a willing volunteer into assisting with field work or occupying a booth at a conference.  And she’s not afraid to go it alone if necessary.

Jean was very familiar with the Black River area, and knew which packs were likely to be around.  Interestingly enough, this was the same part of the country that Aldo Leopold, often considered the father of modern game management, spent his formative years.  On our second day in the area, Jean took me to what is called the “Greenfire overlook.”  It is, as near as anyone can tell, the spot where Aldo Leopold shared a moment with a wolf that would change his thinking forever:

 “We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way.  We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in the white water.  When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf.  A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings.  What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.

In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf.  In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy: how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing.  When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide-rocks.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.  I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain.  I was young then, and full of trigger-itch: I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise.  But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer.  And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by too many wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.

So also with cows.  The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf’s job of trimming the herd to fit the range.  He has not learned to think like a mountain.  Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.”

On the first night out, we found a nice campsite where Jean thought we had a good chance of hearing a howl or two.  After setting up camp and exploring the area, we settled down for dinner and conversation, and then headed into our respective tents as darkness fell.  I had set up my microphone on a long cable leading to the recorder inside my tent.  After making sure everything was working, I climbed into my tent.  Just as I was taking off my pants, the first howl arose, a lonely solitary howl that snaked through the forest, filling up the canyons, lingering in the shadows.  I dived for the “record” button on the recorder, and since the microphone is sensitive enough to pick up sounds of me moving inside the tent, I froze, not moving, hardly even breathing, waiting to hear another howl.  The lobo let out several more howls into the night, as I sat there still partially undressed.  The howls echoed, as if the lobo was standing on the rim of the river canyon.  After a few minutes, silence returned and I shut the recorder off, overwhelmed by what I had just heard.

Again, Leopold’s words come to mind:

“A deep chesty bawl echoes from rimrock to rimrock, rolls down the mountain, and fades into the far darkness of night.  It is an outburst of wild defiant sorrow, and of contempt for all the adversities of the world.”

I heard no more lobo howls the rest of the night, but the coyotes serenaded our camp off and on.   In the morning I discovered fresh lobo tracks in the dirt road near our camp.  They were in the opposite direction from where we had heard the howls, so it’s likely the lobo circled the camp, checking us out.

 “We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness.  The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time.  A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run.  Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world.  Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”

What Leopold recognized was the importance of predators to a healthy ecosystem.  But the primal fear of large predators, especially wolves, remains, and that fear tends to have more influence on wildlife management than does ecosystem science.  Managers still have not, in Leopold’s words, learned to think like a mountain.

Recording made with a Sony PCM-M10 and Audio Technica AT2022 mic with Felmicamps preamp.

Leopold quotes from the essay, “Thinking like a mountain,” which appears in A Sand County Almanac: and sketches here and there.  Published in 1949 by Oxford University Press.